“What I expect to get out of this class” –or– “What blogging means to me” –or– “Meta-blogging”
Besides expanding my views of the world, identifying/implementing effective change, taking part in intellectual conversation, etc. , two things that I expect to get out of my time in CHP 396 are an understanding of blogging and an ability to meaningfully contribute to the blogosphere.
I have never written a blog before, and indeed have never even kept a journal. The form, caught somewhere between a formal essay and a personal self-dialogue, is entirely foreign to me. I am driven by finding solutions to problems. I have never felt the urge to write my thoughts out in an extended fashion and publish them for the world to read; it strikes me as somewhat exhibitionist. I also question the validity of my opinions constantly, and am loath to share them; I am most comfortable with facts.
A brief flirtation with Google unearthed this post from Dave Sherman about the purpose of blogging, and that led to this post and this post from Dr. Frank Buck’s Blog, as well as others. It seems to me that some people blog purely to say what is on their minds, but that the most successful and most interesting blogs have a unifying theme, be it an ongoing critique of the American educational system, horticultural tips, the answers to the daily crossword puzzle, or whatever. A “personal blog”, in which the writer merely writes about whatever he is thinking about, is the form that I have in the past most associated with blogging; it is this form that has always kept me away because it strikes me as tedious, pretentious, and boring to read. With this blog, the theme will be reflections on readings for class. I hope that this will allow me to avoid the sort of mental dumping that repulses me, although this post is turning out to be less grounded and less interesting than I’d like.
I am a fan of brevity, of conveying only the most important points as concisely as possible: If I were to write 1000 words about one topic, I would almost surely edit it mercilessly, probably sacrificing some intricacies of the ideas present, until the post was little more than a sentence. For example, here is this blog post as I am naturally inclined to write it:
“From this class, I hope to develop an appreciation of blogging, a foreign concept to me.”
Hopefully, in the future I will avoid blogging about blogging (meta-blogging?) and instead concentrate on crafting meaningful posts about material relating to class. I hope that I will be able to offer unique insights into focused topics. I hope to deepen my views of the material (and, by extension, the world). I hope to increase the fluidity of my writing so that I am able to express myself more quickly and clearly (this post has taken far longer to write than many would believe). I hope that eventually I will enjoy this blogging process.
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Major difficulties posting this. I wrote it in Word 2003 and cut and pasted it, but the formatting was very strange, and blogger kept rejecting it. Eventually I managed to get just the text and I redid the hyperlinks. I am very frustrated.
ReplyDelete-Dave
A comment on the technology. Then I will write another on the post. I agree it is a pain in that the xml that is behind Word seems to copy along with the text and so what you get is unusable. One possible solution is to use a mail client like Outlook and have your mail in html format. You can then email post to the blog. Formatting is preserved that way, including the hyperlinks. Another alternative is to use blogger as an editor and write directly in their. It feels funny at first. But you get used to it.
ReplyDeleteOn brain dumps, if you have no problem falling asleep and no problem focusing your thoughts on what you should be working on next, then I agree that brain dumps have little value, even for the author. If, on the other hand, you keep spinning your wheels on the same thoughts over and over and can't let go, then a brain dump can be just the ticket to help you move on. Do note that in this case the main beneficiary is the writer, not the reader.
ReplyDeleteIn any event, I believe strongly in an idea called Writing to Learn, though the way that it is sometimes practiced in English classes is not what I have in mind because they want the writing to be a quick hitter that gets the juices flowing on the thinking. I am more interested in depth and pushing the ideas further along. I believe you figure those things out as you write.
I know that is an alien idea for engineers, at least according to Bergmann. She argues that engineers do all their creative thinking first, and then use writing merely to communicate the results.
Viewed this way, the terseness in writing style that you admire emerges as the appropriate form for insiders to communicate with other insiders. Either they don't have to work hard in reading the results, because they already possess a terrific amount of relevant prior knowledge, or the author expects them to work out the results for themselves, because that is really the only way to understand the issues with which the piece is concerned.
I wrote this way as an economist writing economic theory papers. So I believe I understand the approach and the desire to be Spartan with the text. There is elegance in that.
However, it makes communicating with non-experts very difficult. For that there is a need to be much more explicit. And not just about the results but also the thinking and experience that got you there.
So my view is that blogging is a vehicle mainly about communicating formative thinking, much of which comes from the process of writing and from the "pre-writing" (thinking before you get to the keyboard) which you must invariably do to make progress. Further you do that for the non-expert, which in so doing helps to clarify the thinking and perhaps draws in potential readers.
Thanks for all the useful advice and information! I actually said, "yes" aloud when I read the statement, "that engineers do all their creative thinking first, and then use writing merely to communicate the results."
ReplyDeleteIt might take some time, but I will definitely try to be more explicit with my ideas as a way of communicating with 'non-experts', as well as exploring the ideas I'm writing about that are necessarily open-ended.